Horses and Bayonets

In the 1980 presidential election between Carter and Reagan, the League of Women Voters had attempted to organize three debates between the presidential candidates and one between the vice presidential candidates. After the primaries, John Anderson entered the race as a third party candidate and was invited into the debates. Carter refused to participate if Anderson was included and Reagan refused to participate if he wasn’t. Therefore the first debate was held absent Carter, who hoped Anderson would knock off the almost unknown former governor of California. He didn’t. When Reagan made his statement at the conclusion of the debate, it was masterful and upbeat, speaking of a destiny “to build a land here that will be, for all mankind, a shining city on a hill.” The first debate was a Reagan win.

The wrangling between the Carter and Reagan camps over Anderson’s participation continued until it became necessary to cancel the second debate and the vice presidential debate. Reagan finally relented and the third debate was held on October 28, the last Tuesday before the election without Anderson.

Throughout their debate, Carter was somber, distant, and often preachy. Reagan was sunny, optimistic, even folksy at times. Carter’s solutions involved more government. Reagan’s involved limiting government and reducing taxes. Carter tried to portray Reagan as unsuited to assume the arcane workings of the presidency, a dangerous military hawk, and a radical conservative. He pointed to Reagan’s speeches as proof-texts. Reagan responded in good humor with his famous “there you go again” and “we don't have inflation because the people are living too well. We have inflation because the government is living too well.” Reagan’s debate summation was devastating to Carter as he asked the American people if they were better off now than four years ago, and he pointed out that “if all of the unemployed today were in a single line allowing two feet for each of them, that line would reach from New York City to Los Angeles.”

Reagan won the popular vote by 10% and for every electoral vote Carter got, Reagan got ten.

The 2012 presidential debates occurred in an environment similar to that of the single Carter-Reagan debate. The economy is in the tank with out-of-control spending and a soaring national debt that is 16 times larger than in 1980. While Obama is nationally more popular than Carter at the end of his first term, he is an even more radical big government liberal than Carter. There is no hostage crisis in the Middle East as Carter faced, but we’ve just lost an ambassador and three embassy personnel who were murdered in a terrorist attack that Obama long denied was any more than a spontaneous eruption caused by a video. Most striking is the similarity of the challengers in the debates – both were governors, but relatively unknown on the national stage, both derided as unsuitable candidates by the incumbents.

The Romney campaign did not consult me for ideas concerning its debate strategy but if it had I would have said the goal of the first debate – Round One – should be to put Obama in a hole with his base, the hard left. Knowing the Maximum Leader’s natural arrogance and condescension, he will underestimate Romney, whose fitness for President he holds in low regard, and thus he will more likely come to the first debate less prepared than he will be for the other debates. If the outcome of Round One is at least a draw or better for Romney, Obama will be forced to excel in the remaining debates. It’s unrealistic to expect a knockout, I would have counseled, but go into Round One loaded with facts and deliver them in a staccato manner that puts Obama on his heels and makes the broadcast audience sit up and take note that, hey, this Romney guy is a player!

Assuming the Romney campaign was foolish enough to ask my advice on the debate strategy for Round Two, I would have said that, after so strong a showing in the first debate, Romney’s goal is don’t lose your base with a poor performance. The better-than-expected first debate performance finally got the demoralized Romney base fired up after a summer of grousing about campaign mismanagement and sagging poll numbers following the Republican National Convention. So go into Round Two prepared with talking points on your domestic policy agenda, but understand that Obama’s somnambulistic first debate performance won’t be repeated. So don’t let him do to you what you did to him and lose your base. Obama, on the other hand, must reassure his base by being very aggressive – a turn-off for the Independent voter. The enthusiasm advantage has stoked the Republicans, the poll numbers are rising, so even a draw will keep Obama from gaining ground and force him to use the third debate to continue propping up his base rather than appealing to the center.

The second debate was a draw or a modest Obama win. Romney didn’t expect he’d have to debate Obama and the moderator, Candy Crowley, and that was a turn-off to people who believe the media are biased and it didn’t help Obama with the Independent voters. Romney lost little or no ground as evidenced after the second debate by the sheer panic among the mainstream media. Even with unblushingly biased polling, the media couldn’t get their guy out of the margin of error – let alone get him in the lead.

Now comes the third debate. Surely the Romney camp would have come to its senses and not asked my advice again. But if they had, I would have said this. Look; Obama is desperate, his base is still shaky and lacking enthusiasm, he hasn’t pulled away from Romney in the polls, this is his last chance to sway the Independents and undecided voters in a side-by-side comparison, and the unfolding Libyan debacle threatens to engulf his campaign in a cover-up scandal. Romney’s goal in the foreign policy third debate is not to score points with his base, which is secure, it is to appear presidential to the undecided and Independent voters. Americans, after all, aren’t that interested in foreign policy, they just want to be assured that Romney has a grasp of it. He doesn’t have to be as granular as Al Gore in 2000 who knew the names of the leaders of all 192 countries in the world as well as the names of their wives, children, and pets. He can’t display declarative stupidity as Gerald Ford did by asserting that Eastern Europe was not under Soviet domination in the 1976 election. His Iran policy can’t scare voters into thinking he would blow up the world as Barry Goldwater did in suggesting the use of tactical nuclear weapons to end the Vietnam War in the 1964 election. Look presidential, I’d say, and don’t go for a knockout punch. Win the race rather than the debate.

Well, Romney took my advice and it frustrated the dickens out of the base when Obama served up several hanging curve balls that Romney didn’t swing at. Romney shook off Obama’s attempts to shoehorn him as a bomb thrower, (“we can't kill our way out of this mess”), an amateur (“I had the chance to be governor of a state … four years in a row, Democrats and Republicans came together to balance the budget”), and he shook off Obama’s many attempts to attack Romney which he fended off by reminding the audience that the incumbent had no record that he can run on.

Early in the campaign, it became patently obvious that the Obama strategy was to deflect attention away from the sorry state of the economy and the waning influence of the US in the Middle East by painting Romney as not ready for prime time. Romney had a record as a governor, a turnaround manager of the Olympics, and a successful business man. Given his own record, Obama had to turn these achievements into negatives and create doubts about Romney’s suitability as president and allege a bias toward the rich. The debates were his last chance and he failed.

Obama used the third debate to reach out to the undecided and Independents by portraying himself as the seasoned political executive versus the novitiate parvenu. “One thing I’ve learned as Commander-in-Chief,” he began one strutting assertion. “I know you haven't been in a position to actually execute foreign policy …” he moon-walked his soliloquy on the fine points of foreign policy – big talk from a community organizer whose only foreign policy experience prior to his election was to have eaten at the International House of Pancakes, paraphrasing Pat Buchanan.

People with Queeg-like personality disorders like Obama’s have to remind themselves of their self-worth by depreciating the worth and accomplishments of others. Under stress they lose their sense of equanimity as Captain Queeg did on the Caine mutiny witness stand. This causes them to say some truly stupid things like “you didn’t build that [business]” and “you’ve made enough money,” which usually return to haunt them as those statements did. Give them enough time and rope and they always hang themselves. And that is exactly what Romney did in the third debate. Be patient. Be a tar baby, letting Obama get stucker and stucker as he punched away. Smile at verbal abuses, although at one point Romney had to remind Obama that “attacking me is not an agenda.”

Then, voilà, Romney said, “Our Navy is smaller now than any time since 1917. The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission. We're now down to 285. We're headed down to the low 200s” and Obama went for it like a mouse after cheese:

I think Governor Romney maybe hasn't spent enough time looking at how our military works. You — you mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets — (laughter) — because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of Battleship where we're counting ships. It's what are our capabilities.

No doubt Obama thought he’d just had his “you’re no John Kennedy” moment, but Romney had played Obama like a fiddle, and His Immanence came off in this exchange as snarky, little, and condescending. Whatever bridges he had built during the debate to the voters on the sidelines, they probably collapsed with that remark.

After that the line, “horses and bayonets”, began trending on Twitter. "So much sass I was not ready to handle," one online comment read. Web searches for “bayonets” rose 7,215%, according to Google. Big Bird was Obama’s infantile response to the first debate, women and binders was the best he could muster from the second debate, now comes horses and bayonets. He hasn’t heard the last of it. Presidents don’t talk that way.

If you were a Martian who attended the three debates, you’d assume that Romney was the incumbent and Obama was the challenger – probably doubly so in the third debate. Romney got the bump in the polls after the first debates and is pulling away after the third. He’s ahead in Colorado and even in Wisconsin, states I’d previously conceded to Obama. Romney has pulled even in Ohio at 48% each.

In the three debates Romney came armed with facts. If anything, he’s a domestic and foreign policy wonk who likes details. Leadership comes naturally to him. Obama came armed with insults and attack points. Facts and details have never interested him and his priorities as president are suspect. Refusing to see Netanyahu due to a “busy schedule,” he left Washington for The View and an appearance on the Letterman show. Evidence is now leaking out that the White House was told within two hours that the Benghazi consulate was under attack. He did nothing even after an al-Qaeda group credit for it on Facebook. Instead he took off for a Nevada fundraiser. One has to wonder if the man wants to be president or is it Michelle who wants him to be president.

The enveloping Libyan scandal has shaved Obama’s substantial lead over Romney on foreign policy and with the help of the third debate, they are now even. Romney is well ahead in handling domestic policy. The undecided and Independent voters have seen nothing in the debates that would scare them about Romney’s fitness for the office. So while Obama may have won the second and third debates by small margins, the important thing is that Romney is winning the race by an increasing margin with two weeks to go.

As it turns out, Obama was wrong even on horses and bayonets. True, horses remain in military use primarily for ceremonial reasons – largely funerals. My uncle’s remains were drawn to his burial site in Arlington National Cemetery on a horse-drawn caisson. Bayonets are a different thing. There are now more than 600,000 in the military inventory, more than the number of soldiers on the eve of WW I and WW II – something Obama might have known if he spent more time understanding the military.

Voters would do well to heed the questions Reagan asked them on the eve of the 1980 election:

Next Tuesday all of you will go to the polls, will stand there in the polling place and make a decision. I think when you make that decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we're as strong as we were four years ago? And if you answer all of those questions yes, why then, I think your choice is very obvious as to whom you will vote for. If you don't agree, if you don't think that this course that we've been on for the last four years is what you would like to see us follow for the next four, then I could suggest another choice that you have. This country doesn't have to be in the shape that it is in.

An Atlanta caller to the Bill Bennett morning talk show this week said his drive route to his office takes him through “a neighborhood of million dollar homes.” In 2008 their front yards blossomed with Obama signs. This year there is only one Obama sign. All of the other signs say “For Sale.”

Polling Propaganda

While “straw” polling had been used in presidential campaigns since early in the Republic, its use to study political opinion became commonplace in the 20^th century and its scientific underpinnings were much improved by George Gallup, a pioneer in the field.

The 1948 presidential election pitted incumbent Democrat Harry Truman against Republican challenger Thomas Dewey. For that election, Gallup decided, for the first time, to use telephone polling instead of more expensive door to door pollsters historically used to conduct interviews. Additionally, Gallup ceased polling for the Truman-Dewey election in October.

Based on his polling data, Gallup predicted that Dewey would win the election with 50% of the vote and Truman would lose with 44% of the vote. The remaining 6% would be divided among third party candidates. So convinced of the inevitable winner, the Chicago Tribune went to press early with its November 4, 1948 edition and the headline "Dewey Defeats Truman" later made famous by Truman holding the paper for a photo-op.

In fact, the actual voting results were almost the opposite of Gallup’s prediction. Truman got 50% of the votes, Dewey got 45%, and the third party candidates got 5%. Gallup unknowingly made two polling blunders that have been memorialized in textbooks on sampling errors. First, the decision to poll by telephone, a device which in 1948 tended to be in homes of well-off families, often Republican in their politics, introduced a pro-Dewey bias into the polling. Second, the decision to stop polling several weeks short of the election failed to spot last minute vote changes and decisions that favored Truman. Post-election research revealed that 14% of Truman’s voters didn’t decide for him until two weeks before the election and 3% didn’t decide for him until Election Day.

Polling methodologies and technology have improved since Gallup began to develop his craft, but it remains an imprecise mixture of art and science. For a number of reasons, even the best efforts of poll designers can’t eliminate all sources of error that contaminate the reliability of their findings. The expense of polling – recently around $50 to $100 per person interviewed – forces pollsters to work with the smallest samples that predict outcomes with tolerable margins of error, usually about +/- 3% in samples of around 1,000 people. Polls must be paid for or conducted by the organization that wants the results, which can introduce bias into sample selection. And because the target of the polling – voters in the case of elections – can change their mind or delay deciding until the last moment, polling has to be repeated often. This makes national election polling especially expensive.

Because people are jealous of their time and privacy, telephones are about the only practical way to conduct a poll today. Yet, about a third of all homes no longer have land line phones, relying exclusively on cell phones whose numbers aren’t published and can’t be robo-dialed under federal law. Cell phone-only households tend to be younger people with Democrat leanings, so the difficulty of getting input from a third of the households introduces a bias. Moreover, land line telephone polling oversamples the elderly, who are at home more often than the working age population. Poll designers in recent years are finding that 38% of their telephone calls aren’t answered and 53% of the calls that are answered won’t participate, leaving 9% of the attempted calls willing to answer questions. That means only one in ten of a sample can be reached.

A truly random sample – especially with a sample size around 1,000 – may not reflect the makeup of the expected voter turnout. For example, a registered voter is not necessarily a likely voter. Some who are registered to vote people will sit out elections. Women represent 51% of the population, the racial makeup of the population is 67% white, 13% black, and 15% Hispanic, and the age makeup is 13% over 65 and 24% under 18. Suppose a truly random sample of 1,000 people was created but it consisted of 60% females, 75% whites, and 30% over 65. Its randomness doesn’t reflect the population and could produce misleading voter preferences. If adjustments are made to reflect the population, what gives? Randomness.

One of the most difficult things to simulate in polling samples is the party affiliation turnout. It’s generally believed that long-term political identification averages out to about a third each for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. But this varies from election to election. Polling of 15,000 adults by Scott Rasmussen last month showed self-identified Republicans at 37%, Democrats at 34%, and Independents at 29%. The 2012 voter turnout, however, could be quite different.

Based on exit polls, the 2008 turnout was 39% Democrat, 32% Republican, and 29% Independent (which is referred to as D+7) whereas the midterm 2010 turnout was 35%/35%/30% – i.e. a D+0 turnout in which Republicans gained seats in the Senate, won the majority in the House, and gained majorities in state legislatures.

The 2008 election landslide for Obama was extraordinary for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the black and Hispanic voter turnout. Blacks, who historically cast 11% of the presidential vote, cast 14% in 2008, and Hispanics, who historically cast about 7% of the vote, cast 9% in 2008. The turnout among college age voters was double the historic norm.

When we look at the 2000 turnout, which was 39%/35%/27% (D+4), and the 2004 turnout, which was 37%/37%/26% (D+0), we see how unusual the 2008 turnout was with its D+7 weighting. Then, after the Obama administration in office for two years, the 2010 midterm had a D+0 turnout. If we want to know which candidate is ahead at the moment, we must guess at what the turnout will be. But the 2008 D+7 tilt most certainly will not be repeated in 2012 – which brings me to the point I want to make in this blog.

When you look at the major polls, the edge one candidate has over the other varies considerably from poll to poll. How can this be? There are several reasons. One is the difference in polling methods – there are tracking polls, such as Rasmussen, Gallup, and Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) and there are interval polls. Tracking polls are conducted daily and presented as a moving average – often over a moving three-day period. Interval polls are conducted over, say, a week or two week period. A tracking poll is continuously updated; an interval poll isn’t. It’s important to pay attention to the date of interval poll because something substantive may have happened after it was conducted – a debate performance, a political story develops legs, an economic report is released – making the poll worthless since it hadn’t factored in new developments.

Another reason poll results aren’t comparable is who they poll. Some polls survey adults – those 18 years old and older – some survey registered voters, and some survey likely voters. Over the last 30 years a little over 50% of the adults and about 70% of the registered voters have voted in presidential elections. Only likely voter polling is reliable in comparing the relative positions of candidates. Polling among the other two groups is a popularity contest.

Yet another reason for the variance among polls is the turnout model used. As shown above, the pollster can oversample race, gender, and age, but even more important is oversampling political affiliation. Some polls don’t give the internal details of the survey like sample size, margin of error, and the turnout model used. You can guess that the margin of error of most polls is +/- 3 or 4. A poll less accurate than that is no better than throwing darts. But if the sample is less than about a thousand or there is no information on the turnout assumptions, ignore its estimate of who is leading whom. A poll is worthless if it won’t reveal the turnout assumptions on which its sample composition is based.

In the six presidential elections that preceded the Obama election, the turnout average was less than D+3. Yet last week the Washington Post – which is tied with the New York Times to win the Obama Outstanding Media Cheerleader Award – came out with a poll using a D+9 turnout model that gave Obama a 3-point lead over Romney. Keeping in mind that the 2008 Obama Coronation was a rare D+7, the Washington Post poll at D+9 is laughable, and even with its unprecedented oversampling of Democrats, it couldn’t get Obama’s lead outside of the margin for error.

Each percentage point which oversamples Democrats takes a point from Romney, so if the Washington Post poll is adjusted to a more reasonable D+3, Obama would go from a 3-point lead to a 3-point deficit, and a D+3 or less is probably the true state of the popular vote race nationally right now. Why? Because of at least three reasons. First, the second debate was essentially a tie, so Romney lost no ground and Obama gained none. If anything, Candy Crowley’s boorish correction of Romney’s Benghazi assertion hurt Obama. Second, Romney has the “enthusiasm advantage” among his supporters versus Obama’s (over 60% support Romney enthusiastically – double the number McCain had in 2008.) And third, Romney has a 10-point lead among Independents, and Independents decide election outcomes. All things considered, we could see a turnout of D+0 which would assure Romney a large victory.

All of this is known to the Obama camp, including their sycophants in the media and pollsters. So I believe there is another reason we are seeing and will continue to see (until the election) more polls showing Obama ahead of Romney or polls with a Romney lead stuck in the margin of error – i.e. essentially tied. That reason is to demoralize Romney supporters. More than in any past election, polls in the 2012 election are being used by the media to impact the election rather than to report its status.

That’s not paranoia. One important voter group is still in play. The undecided voter. Depending on which poll you look at, the percentage of likely voters who are still undecided is between 3% and 5%. Let’s split the difference and call it 4%. In the last several presidential elections, undecided voters have broken for the challenger. Obama-biased polling provides fodder to the mainstream media to trumpet that Obama will be reelected … four more years … so the undecided voter needs to go with the winner and get on the Obama bandwagon. So far this tactic is succeeding. Even though the electorate is about equally split between the two candidates, about two-thirds of them believe Obama will be reelected. It’s a mind game. It’s polling propaganda.

The D+7 political party mix of 2008 will not reoccur in 2012 – for several reasons.

Despite last week’s phony jobs report, which proved a fluke when this week’s numbers were released, half of black teenagers can’t find jobs and the unemployment rate among minorities is 14% – almost twice the national average. Obama will not get a repeat of the black, Hispanic, and Independent vote he got in 2008. Obama is currently polling 85% among blacks, down 10 points from the 95% he got in 2008. College graduates can’t find jobs. They aren’t likely to vote for Obama in the historic proportion they did in 2008.

Romney is now polling above the historic norm for Republicans among Hispanics and Jewish voters. In the gender demographic, Obama led McCain 56% to 43% among women in the 2008 election; Romney is tied with him.

Gasoline was under $2 a gallon when Obama took office. It’s almost twice that expensive now. Obama has declared war on fossil fuels, especially coal. The United Coal Miners Union refused to go to the Democrat Convention. Are they and the others laid off by Obama’s energy policies going to vote for him (again) in two weeks? I don’t think so.

Seniors are the most reliable voting bloc in the electorate. They are having problems finding doctors who will take Medicare patients. With all they’ve heard about ObamaCare and the theft of over $700 billion to help pay for it, do you think they will vote to keep him in office? I don’t. Romney has a 5-point lead among over-65 voters.

How many people do you know who didn’t vote for Obama in 2008 but will vote for him in 2012? How many do you know who will admit to voting for him in 2008 but have said they won’t vote for him again? Obama is set to lose votes he had in 2008.

My advice is to ignore the polls in the last two weeks of this campaign. They’ve been weaponized. But if you’re hooked on polls, then pay attention only to tracking polls like Rasmussen and Gallup and to UnskewedPolls.com.

But setting polls aside, ask yourself instead why aren’t you seeing 2012 Obama bumper stickers on cars? Where are the Obama signs along roads and in yards? Why are Obama’s crowds getting smaller and why is his intake of cash declining? If Obama is cresting a wave, why can’t he get his job approval ratings above 50% and why has his job approval fallen 20 points since he took office?

Assume that Obama’s desire for a second term imposed some modicum of restraint on his first term agenda. There will be no restraint on his second term agenda because he can’t run again. Maybe that’s why he won’t talk about where he wants to take the country if given four more years. So ask yourself this. Do you believe that a guy whose ideology created an economic disaster at home and a foreign policy disaster abroad can persuade voters to give him the blank check that a no-restraint second term represents? At this point in time – late October – Obama had a 6-point lead in 2008. Today Gallup gives Romney a 6-point lead, Rasmussen a 2-point lead, and UnskewedPolls.com gives Romney a 5-point lead.

Obama is headed for defeat on November 6. If the candidates are tied today and all or most of the undecided voters break for Romney, Romney wins a popular vote spread of three or four points. If Romney is ahead today, as I believe he is, the spread will be greater. But Romney has to win at least 270 electoral votes. Among the 11 battleground states, three – VA, NC, and FL are no longer in play. Romney is leading there. I will concede CO, OH, PA, and WI to Obama – a total of 56 electoral votes – even though I believe Romney can win WI and CO. If he doesn’t, Romney wins with 276 electoral votes. If he wins WI and CO, Romney wins with 295 votes.

So far, Obama hasn’t spent money or campaigned in PA. If he does either, he’s in trouble. PA has 20 votes.

November 6 is your chance to rise up. Make your voice heard. Vote. Change the future. Send this blog to your friends. And if you know of someone who plans to vote for Obama, ask this question, “What about the last four years have you liked so much that you want four more years of it?”

The Incredibly Shrinking President

During the late summer and fall of 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas faced off in a series of seven Senatorial election debates, one each in the seven Congressional Illinois districts of that day and held from August 21 to October 15. Douglas was the incumbent Senator and Lincoln was a publicly unknown challenger. Debate moderators were unheard of in that time. Rather, debates were a stand up affair in which each debater sought to win the audience to his argument while attacking the weaknesses in his opponent’s argument. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, each man used the academic discipline of argumentation to favorably influence the voter audience, although in 1858 Senators were chosen by state legislatures, not by popular election.

Debate format in 1858 gave 60 minutes to the first to speak, 90 minutes to the second, and then the first debater was given an additional 30 minute to respond. Lincoln and Douglas alternated in going first although Douglas began four of the seven debates.

In contrast to the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the election debates of modern times are media events in which the debaters and the moderators have almost equal standing. Not infrequently the moderators control the debate so tightly that it doesn’t allow the debaters to sell themselves and their contrasting positions to the voters; instead the audience hears a series of talking point prompts put forward by the moderators to satisfy their (sometimes partisan) interests and goals. Because of these modern “debate” formats, we hear little skilled argumentation and instead hear a lot of hype and sound bites.

That happened extraordinarily less in last Wednesday’s Denver debate between Romney and Obama. It quickly became apparent that Obama was unable to think on his feet when confronted by an aggressive opponent, falling back on stump speech lines as he became increasingly frustrated and angry. The moderator, Jim Lehrer, a former PBS news anchor who likely has liberal leanings, was savaged by the media after the debate for “losing control” to two of the strongest personalities in America.

In my opinion the debate moderator should have done just as Lehrer did – ask a fairly open-ended question and then let the debaters have at it. Several times Lehrer did try to cut off debate, only to have one of the debaters overrule him in order to finish a comment or to respond to comments made by the other debater. Lehrer simply closed his eyes, and with a “what the heck” look on his face, let the debate go to the next hiccup where he was successful in getting back the moderator role and introduce the next topic. Viewers learned and saw more than would have happened if Lehrer had covered his agenda and exercised tight control.

What torqued the media and the Left in the aftermath of the debates was that the format did allow the moderator to jump in and save Obama’s bacon when Romney had him on the ropes. And on the ropes is where he spent most of the 90-minute debate. It became quickly evident that Obama didn’t understand that the debate, which was seen by 67 million people, was putting the implications of his demeanor and body language on national display.  He was subdued and professorial in his responses. He looked disgusted, scribbled notes rather than looking at Romney as he spoke, and was so clueless that at the end of the debate, he smiled and thought he’d won. His debate prep team thought otherwise. They didn’t even attend the press room gathering after the debate.

Romney, on the other hand, was upbeat and prepared as evidenced by his frequent multi-pointed answers – Point 1, Point 2, Point 3 … – showing that his responses had been thought through and were well-organized. He looked at Obama both when he was speaking and when Obama was speaking. He smiled throughout the debate and at one point said, “It’s fun, isn’t it.” Romney was the last of the two to leave his podium and the stage, giving the impression that he was dominant – the alpha male. He smiled as his family joined him on stage and he well aware that he’d won.

The polling after the debate confirmed the Romney “win.” Among Republicans, Romney was the winner by a margin of 95 points (97% versus 2%), but even Democrats conceded a Romney win by ten points (49% versus 39%.) Most importantly, Independents gave the win to Romney by a whopping 51 points (70% versus 19%), and their vote will determine the election.

A Pew poll after the debate had the Obamaphiles in tears. Before the debate, Obama was leading Romney by a 51 to 43 margin which morphed into a four-point Romney lead of 49 to 45 after the smoke cleared. With less than 30 days to go before the election, Obama’s debate performance had given Romney a 12-point turnaround from trailing by eight points to leading by four. Tall in the saddle before the debate, Obama became the incredibly shrinking man after it.

Expecting a knockout punch that again would send a tingle up his leg, the anticipated schadenfreude failed to materialize, sending Chris Matthews into a meltdown:

I don't know what he was doing out there, he had his head down, he was enduring the debate, rather than fighting it. Romney, on the other hand, came in with a campaign. He had a plan, he was going to dominate the time, he was going to be aggressive, he was going to push the moderator around, which he did effectively, he was going to relish the evening, enjoying it. What was Romney doing tonight? He was winning!

Romney was dominant, but Obama spoke four minutes longer because he couldn’t collect his thoughts while on the ropes.

Andrew Sullivan, an outspoken Obamaphile, was practically on suicide watch. After seeing the latest Pew polls, he wrote:

Seriously: has that kind of swing ever happened this late in a campaign? Has any candidate lost 18 points among women voters in one night ever? And we are told that when Obama left the stage that night, he was feeling good. That's terrifying. On every single issue, Obama has instantly plummeted into near-oblivion. He still has some personal advantages over Romney – even though they are all much diminished. Obama still has an edge on Medicare, scores much higher on relating to ordinary people, is ahead on foreign policy, and on being moderate, consistent and honest (only 14 percent of swing voters believe Romney is honest). But on the core issues of the economy and the deficit, Romney is now kicking the president's a - -.

Democrat Buzz Bissinger, a contributor to the Daily Beast blog, wrote that he was switching his vote to Romney because the Denver debate showed a tired, clueless Obama who is "no longer the chosen one. He is just too cool for school in a country desperate for the infectiousness of rejuvenation." During the debate, Bill Maher tweeted “I can't believe I'm saying this, but Obama looks like he DOES need a teleprompter. Maher, who gave $1 million to an Obama super PAC, said he believed Obama “took my million and spent it all on weed.”

Chris Cillizza who blogs for the Washington Post wrote Obama’s performance "raised a bigger question: Is he overrated as a candidate?" and Stacey Dash, a black actress told her 250,000 twitter followers that they should "Vote for Romney. The only choice for your future." She got pummeled afterward for being a traitor to her race and party.

Al Gore blamed Obama’s poor performance on the altitude of Denver. I was expecting him to blame global warming.

The thing that got all of the Obamaphiles’ panties in a wad is they seem not to really know their man. Keep in mind that before becoming President of the United States at 47 years of age, this man had accomplished nothing of significance. He immediately clamped a lid on anything that would shed light on who he was before becoming a public figure. Even his college grades and papers and those of his wife were off limits. He surrounded himself with a coterie of sycophant advisors who made him believe that, unlike King Canute, he could turn back the tide. For almost four years, the media has failed to call him or his administration to account for their actions or lack of them. Perhaps what 67 million people saw on the Denver debate stage is the real Obama. But it sure seemed like the real Romney showed up.

Obama complained that debate prep was a “drag.” Visiting a Nevada field office during a break from preparing, he couldn’t remember how many days remained before the election. George Will hit the nail on the head by recently saying Obama is not known as a martyr to the work ethic. Romney campaign coordinator, former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu called Obama “lazy” after his debate performance. On a recent talk show, the host said Obama got angry with John Kerry (who played the part of Romney in the prep) because Kerry’s jabs got under Obama’s thin skin causing him to say, “’To hell with this bull s- - - ‘and he went outside of his Nevada resort suite to shoot baskets.” (I haven’t been able to source that quotation independently so it may be shaded.)

But post-debate stories have been leaked to reporters that Obama doesn’t like debates, and that he was unhappy having to debate Romney whom he views with disdain. Apparently Obama believes he can hold on to the White House displaying no more substance than he exhibited in 2008 … except that in 2008 voters were ready for a change and their choice was between a tired old man or a hip black guy, while in 2012 he has a contender who is as smart or smarter than he.

Obama has all of the symptoms of first termer disease. After four years of living in an isolated bubble surrounded by people who rarely challenged his ragged ideas, possessing the power of the presidency with its carefully orchestrated photo ops, speeches to adoring fans, and the perks of Roman emperor, and further compounded by an exaggerated vanity which caused him to characterize himself without blushing as “eye candy” during his last appearance on The View, Obama believes his own baloney. He has lost a sense of the American mainstream, if he ever had it. He doesn’t know how to deal with opposing ideas and that showed in Denver.

I think Bill Maher was right. The man can’t function without a teleprompter. His famous grandiloquent rhetoric has always been crafted by professional writers. They never were his words. This Emperor has no clothes.

In Denver Obama spewed ideology rather than logically grounded arguments to explain his intellectual position on issues. He doesn’t know how to debate or sell ideas because his close advisors are hood ornaments, not counterweights. Whenever it was his turn to speak during the debate, he fell back on stump speech clichés and straw man arguments as he so often does when characterizing opponent views – except in this situation the opponent wouldn’t let him get away with it. Obama should have read the Lincoln-Douglas debates as preparation. He would have better understood how the craft of argumentation is practiced.

Not only has Obama surrounded himself with close advisors whose experience is confined to government, but also they don’t understand how the economy works. Thus, even if Obama were inclined to learn from them, he couldn’t. They don’t know what they don’t know, and neither does he. His understanding of the economy in the debate was so awful that at one point Romney said that he had been in business 25 years and had no idea what Obama was talking about regarding outsourcing.

When the debate topic turned to energy, Obama complained about the “$4 billion the oil industry gets in corporate welfare.” Romney corrected him and said:

The Department of Energy has said the tax break for oil companies is $2.8 billion a year. And it’s actually an accounting treatment, as you know, that’s been in place for a hundred years … this $2.8 billion goes largely to small companies, to drilling operators and so forth.

“… as you know”? Obama doesn’t know. Romney piled on the facts – and understood them. Obama has failed to grasp the facts after four years of being surrounded by them.

Obama’s bashing of “corporate welfare” gave Romney the opening he was apparently waiting for. He contrasted “corporate welfare” with Obama’s policy – the $90 billion spent on green energy projects in three years:

… don’t forget, you put $90 billion, like 50 years’ worth of [oil subsidy] breaks, into solar and wind, to Solyndra and Fisker and Tester and Ener1 ... I had a friend who said you don’t just pick the winners and losers, you pick the losers, all right? … And these businesses, many of them have gone out of business … I think about half of the ones [you] have invested in have gone out of business … a number of them happened to be owned by people who were contributors to your campaigns.

Ouch! That hurt.

Romney noted that Obama wasted his first two years passing ObamaCare without a single Republican vote. He contrasted his own experience as Governor of Massachusetts, saying if he had said “it’s my way or the highway” he wouldn’t have been able to get a lot done:

First of all, I like the way we did it in Massachusetts. I like the fact that in my state, we had Republicans and Democrats come together and work together. What you did instead was to push through a plan without a single Republican vote. As a matter of fact, when Massachusetts did something quite extraordinary – elected a Republican senator to stop ObamaCare, you pushed it through anyway.

So entirely on a partisan basis, instead of bringing America together and having a discussion on this important topic, you pushed through something that you and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid thought was the best answer and drove it through. What we did in a legislature 87% Democrat, we worked together; 200 legislators in my legislature, only two voted against the plan by the time we were finished.

What were some differences? We didn’t raise taxes. You’ve raised them by $1 trillion under ObamaCare. We didn’t cut Medicare. Of course, we don’t have Medicare, but we didn’t cut Medicare by $716 billion. We didn’t put in place a board that can tell people ultimately what treatments they’re going to receive [the IPAB]. We didn’t do something that I think a number of people across this country recognize – put people in a position where they’re going to lose the insurance they had and they wanted. Right now, the CBO says up to 20 million people will lose their insurance as ObamaCare goes into effect next year. And likewise, a study by McKinsey and Company of American businesses said 30% of them are anticipating dropping people from coverage.

So for those reasons – for the tax, for Medicare, for this board, and for people losing their insurance – this is why the American people don’t want ObamaCare. It’s why Republicans said, do not do this, and the Republicans had the plan. They put a plan out, a bipartisan plan. It was swept aside.

I think something this big, this important has to be done on a bipartisan basis. And we have to have a president who can reach across the aisle and fashion important legislation with the input from both parties.

When Lehrer asked Romney and Obama how each would solve a list of problems facing the country, all of Obama’s solutions were government solutions, whereas, Romney’s solutions were private sector solutions. Obama’s plan to get the economy rolling is more government spending despite the country’s mounting debt and deficits. Romney’s plan is to unshackle private industry, domestic energy production, and changes in regulations and tax policy. When Obama tried to take credit for the oil boom of the past couple of years, Romney reminded him that it had all occurred on privately-owned land and that Obama’s administration had closed down public lands.

The Lincoln-Douglas debate topics ranged over many issues but slavery dominated the debate. Likewise the Romney-Obama debate ranged over many issues but the role of government dominated the debate. What we will choose on November 6 is one of two contrasting and conflicting views on the role of government. Romney sees the federal government as necessary but facilitative. Obama sees federal government as omnipotent and regulatory. Romney sees taxes as a way to pay for government; Obama sees taxes as a way to reengineer society. Romney sees problems solved mostly by state government. Obama sees them solved in Washington. Romney views the American pursuit of profit and a better life as a social good.  Obama views individualism with suspicion, convinced that it benefits a select few.

As Romney summarized the role of government:

We believe in maintaining for individuals the right to pursue their dreams and not to have the government substitute itself for the rights of free individuals. And what we’re seeing right now is, in my view, a trickle-down government approach, which has government thinking it can do a better job than free people pursuing their dreams. And it’s not working.

After the debate, Obama tried to make the best of having been trounced by ridiculing the “very spirited fellow who showed up on the stage claiming to be Mitt Romney.” His campaign team has unleashed Big Bird on the Romney camp. The Obama war chest will shortly surpass $1 billion to elect him to a $400,000 a year job. And over the past four years, the rock star president has waved to fawning, cheering crowds in his unending election campaign, pumping his ego into believing he would eviscerate an intellectually inferior presidential misfit in the Denver debate.

Instead, Clint Eastwood’s empty chair showed up.